Member's Off-site Blogs

haven't we seen this before?...

As a major winter storm made its way up the Atlantic Coast on Thursday, local authorities from New York City to Maine began to make preparations for what forecasters said could be the heaviest snowfall for some cities in the Northeast in a century.

Airlines began announcing the suspension of flights out of New York and Boston airports starting Friday night, as thousands of workers readied their plows, checked their stocks of salt and braced for what will most likely be a cold, wet weekend. Amtrak announced that it would suspend northbound service out of Penn Station in New York and southbound service out of Boston beginning early Friday afternoon.

Gas stations in parts of New York City and New Jersey had long lines Thursday night, according to local residents, a signal, perhaps, that many were taking storm warnings seriously.

More than 2200 flights for Friday had been cancelled, according to the Web site FlightAware, the majority originiting or departing from the areas affected by the storm.

By late Thursday night, schools across New York and Connecticut had announced they would close, or dismiss students early.

On Long Island, where some forecasts said there could be more than 18 inches of snow, the power company, which has received heavy criticism for its response to Hurricane Sandy, promised customers that they were prepared.

The city of Boston, where forecasts called for more than two feet of snow to fall by Saturday, announced that it would close all schools on Friday, joining other localities in trying to get ahead of the storm and keep people off the roads.

This would make the delight of the global warming denialists... Cold, cold, snow, a one hundred year cold storm: the planet is cooling... but then in Alaska the temperature is warm and it rains instead of snowing... A snow dog-sled race had to be cancelled because of lack of snow and rain...

Meanwhile as Troppo-kite flying Tony wants the smegs of the populace to move north, one has to realise the "bold idea" is a crazy idea... Some settlements, such as port Essingon, in the Northern territory never made it beyond a few crazy years...

From Wikipedia and Gus' memory...:

In the early 19th century, the British government became interested in establishing a settlement on Australia's northern coastline in order to facilitate trade with Asia. In 1824, Port Essington was proposed as the first such settlement,[1] but was later passed over in favour of Fort Dundas on Melville Island and Fort Wellington at Raffles Bay. In 1831, a small station was constructed in the area, in the hope of using it as a stopping point for ships, but it was rarely used. When both Fort Dundas and Fort Wellington failed within several years, the Port Essington site was revisited. As a result, a settlement, officially named Victoria Settlement after the young Queen Victoria, but popularly known as Port Essington, was surveyed by Charles Tyers in 1838, consisting of 24 houses and a hospital.

While the British government intended to establish Port Essington as a major trading port, along the lines of Singapore, the new settlement suffered from the same adverse conditions that had previously plagued Fort Dundas and Fort Wellington. The settlement lacked resources and supplies and skilled labour. While some prefabricated buildings were brought from Sydney, many had to be built with what materials could be found in the area, and due to the unskilled nature of the builders, many of these were of poor quality. Disease was also rampant among the small population, and living conditions were poor. Consequently, it struggled to attract settlers, and the post was much-disliked by the troops stationed there.

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Meanwhile temperatures along the northern Western Australian coast are hovering between 34 ad 36 degree Celsius at 8:00 PM local time tonight (8/2/2013)... And yes we have seen similar conditions in the US: A storm on the edge of the US coast with a trough coming in to meet together: same pattern as Sandy... Global warming? You bet... Meanwhile the ocean temperature west of the UK coast is 12 degrees Celsius — air temp about 9 degress Celsius.

Ah, Florida. It’s celebrated as the land of sunshine, snow birds, theme parks, and beaches. This year, it’s also considered the hottest state for snatching up foreclosed homes on the cheap.

For deals on distressed homes, look south. According to a new study from the foreclosure-tracking firm RealtyTrac, Florida was home to 8 of the country’s top 20 metropolitan areas for highest foreclosure rates last year. By no small coincidence, 5 of the top 10 “Best Places to Buy Foreclosures in 2013″ also just so happen to be in Florida.

To come up with its “Best Places”—one of the few “Best Places” lists cities would prefer to not be associated with—RealtyTrac uses data points including the number of months of inventory of foreclosure homes, the percentage of total sales that are foreclosures, and the average foreclosure discount percentage. Tally up the numbers and the hottest market for scooping up distressed properties at major discounts is the Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville area of Florida. RealtyTrac summed up the market’s top-ranking data this way:

Topping the list of best places to buy foreclosures in 2013 was the Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville metro area in Florida with a total score of 394: 34 months’ supply of inventory, foreclosure sales representing 24 percent of all sales, average foreclosure discount of 28 percent, and a 308 percent increase in foreclosure activity in 2012 compared to 2011.

One does not need to be a genius or a computer to know that there is a relationship between climate change and weather... For a while now, the exoerts have been saying that their climate models are predicting more extreme weather events, hot and cold, with more powerful storms... What is happening NOW is what they predicted conservatively for 25 years on from now...

One could ask "but the weather is not so topsy turvy somewhere else"... And one is right but what climate change does, as well as increase global temperature average, is to increase the various difference of atmospheric energy potential LOCALLY as well as globally. As mentioned before, Sydney got its warmest day on record recently (45.8 — 46.5 at the airport)... AS NOTED on this site, THIS DIFFERENCE OF POTENTIAL IS COMPLEX but in a nutshell should winds from the south along the East coast of the US be one degree C warmer than usual and winds from the north (a trough generated by an "unusual" swoop from a very cold jet stream be a couple of degrees colder than usual, it's like two cars running into each other a twice the speed they should have, should they had respected the speed limit. Next time it will be three time the speed... with more frequency.

Sorry to harp on and on but, on this issue, we are in FAR MORE TROUBLE than we realise... What are the chances of stronger more devastating tornadoes in spring 2013 in the US? About 80 (99) per cent chances... What are the chances of more dangerous heat waves in Australia this summer? About 75 (95) per cent. This of course are my personal loony estimates. The climate models are far more conservative in order not to scare the pants off us...

But the reality is that, with 400 ppm of CO2 (of which 200 ppm is anthropogenic) in the atmosphere plus a lot of extra human generated methane, we're in to a rise of temperature well above nine (9) degrees Celsius (my estimate) sooner than we think, when the momentum of the process takes hold of its own feed back loop...

A river of water dragged everything it encountered on the Etnea way — cars and bar tables dragged away. Trees were uprooted and eaves collapsed, emergency firefighters stayed on alert for fear of fire, then the alarm was downgraded. People fleed over the rooftops, a worker fell into a pit of eight metres.

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If my "computer model" is correct, we have the strong prospect of powerful nasty tornadoes in April in the US and a more than usual "Indian" summer in Sydney, in August... who knows... some butterfly in Russia might change all this and induce a different summer in Paris...

One would ask why blame global warming for the recent "freak" storms in Sydney yesterday... Let me explain... The same phenomenom is happening along the coasts of Europe and the USA... With increased heat and increased humidity, even in minute increments, a greater difference of potential energy is created between atmospheric conditions above land and sea... and other air masses displacements.

For example "sea breezes" are now often turning into storms. In the US the difference of temperature between land and sea plus the elevated humidity and the usual north/south weather competing patterns end up creating more severe snow storms but not necessarily colder weather. Watch for the hurricane season, it has 90 per cent chance of being "horrid"...

In Europe, this has led to more severe downpours and flooding like never seen before.(see article above)

In Sydney, with the diurnal and nocturnal temperature variation plus the warm eastern southerly current now around 26-27 degree Celsius, plus some nasty little lows that are bordering on being mini-cyclones and that travel more than 2500 kilometres southwards hugging the coast, we can only expect stronger and more numerous extremes of weather events...

Insurance companies must be "fed up" with the weather worldwide. Though most insurance companies would have a (not so secret) "global warming" empirical component in their premium calculations, I believe that soon, they will have to add a serious extra levy for this problem alone... Things are not going to improve... Sure we may have a few days of "beautiful" weather from time to time, but these are soon displaced by either more "freak" storms with high humidity or more heat bubbles in the 45 degrees Celsius range...

Global warming is far more serious than we're prepared to admit... We should be scared... for good reason...

The new research "is perhaps the most clear evidence yet published on the vulnerability of permafrost to global warming and the very real threat of additional carbon dioxide and methane emissions from the thawing of the permafrost as large carbon deposits get exposed," says Josep Canadell, director of the Global Carbon Project, who was not involved in the study.

The researchers show "how discontinuous permafrost has melted in the past with global temperature increases of 0.5 - 1.0°C, exactly what is being observed nowadays in vast areas of Siberia, Canada and Alaska with exactly the same increases in global temperatures," notes Canadell, a research scientist at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research.

"Vaks goes beyond, and shows that ... carbon reservoirs in the continuous permafrost will substantially thaw with temperatures of 1.5°C," he says.

"If you put these findings in the context of recent data published on the current trajectory of climate change well beyond 2°C - in fact on the trajectory of 4 - 5°C - then the concerns we have of a potential large warming feedback in the permafrost has just come all that more true."